A Sneak Peek into My "Other Job"

The world may know me as a stay-at-home mom, but in reality I've been working — sometimes as much as 20 hours a week — at my "church job" for as long as I've been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In my religion's parlance, a person's "church job" is referred to as their "calling." Nearly everybody has a calling that changes every few years, and it's how every ministering and leadership role in the church is filled, from the local nursery leader (me!) to the president of the entire church.

This is a crazy and unprecedented way to run a church, and I love it.

Not my actual church, but it looks a lot like this.

A reader on a post I wrote a few years ago about callings asked if I'd write about the callings I've held throughout the years, so here are a few:

Current Calling

(Nursery Leader)

Right now I'm our ward's nursery leader. Another woman and I watch a room full of kids 18-36 months old for an hour after church. We play trains, we sing songs, we have snack, we do a short lesson about Jesus and then we color. It's heaven.

A lot of moms with little kids wouldn't like to be in the nursery because it's the same thing they do at home ALL DAY LONG and only hastens their descent into madness, but for me nursery is the best. Toddlers are my happy place.

If you've been following this blog for more than 5 minutes you know I'm having majorly sad feelings about my kids growing up, but for at least one hour a week I still get to be a part of those sweet toddler years for as long as this calling is mine.

First Calling

(Valiant 11 Teacher)

Just a few short months after I joined the church at age 18, I found myself teaching the Old Testament to a class of 11- and 12-year-olds. I look back and laugh now because I knew nothing. I did grow up in a Christian religion so at least I was vaguely familiar with most of the Bible stories, but every kid in there knew them ten times better than I did. (To be clear, I was given a lesson manual so I wasn't totally winging it every week.)

Teaching has always been a passion of mine (I was going to major in Education before I switched to English) and those kids were so amazing. I accompanied them to Primary and learned the children's songs that are sung by my kids today. And it was my first introduction to just how much faith we as Latter-day Saints place in our young people: they were learning to be capable, organized leaders who seek personal revelation from God in all areas of their lives.

Most Challenging Calling

(2nd Counselor, Relief Society Presidency)

The Relief Society is in charge of the welfare of our congregation's women and their families. The president does the lion's share of overseeing this, but she also has two helpers, called counselors.

One counselor was tasked with organizing Sunday lessons for the women, and the other was asked to organize weeknight activities for them every few months. Now, if I tell you I'm awesome at organizing and teaching, but paralyzed with fear and indecision by anything that even faintly resembles party planning, which of the two do you think I was?

You're right, I was the counselor over activities. And it was brutal. Phillip says I have an excellent poker face when it comes to acting normal, so I don't even think anyone knew how completely out of my element I was.

And yet, I grew a lot through the calling. I learned I can get better at things I'm horrible at. I also got a front-row seat to see our Relief Society president helping people and just loving them, whoever and wherever they were. She was (and is) a great source of encouragement and example to me.

Hardest-to-Like Calling

(Sunbeams Teacher)

My co-teacher when I taught Sunbeams (the 3- and 4-year-old class) was one of my favorite people ever so I liked working with her, but I struggled with the calling. I had a hard time getting into fluffy lessons like "I Am Thankful for Fish" (seriously, that was Lesson 11) which really didn't even matter because most of the time I was just putting band-aids on fake boo-boos or fielding a long and irrelevant story about someone's pet guinea pig in answer to an important question.

I don't think this would bother me now, but I was at a different place in my life then. The kids I had at home were 5, 3, and 1, and I was probably feeling the same burnout young moms might feel in nursery.

I try to come away with something I learned from every calling, and even though I struggled to find it this time, my co-teacher and I still provided a positive place for the kids to learn and be on Sundays, and that's important, too.

Favorite Calling

(Primary President)

For almost 3 years I was president of Primary, our congregation's children's organization. That includes looking out for the welfare of each child, managing the logistics for all the Sunday classes and weeknight activities, planning quarterly kids' activities outside of church, and once a year, putting on a big program where the kids present what they've learned that year.

It was so much work, and I loved it. I liked problem-solving, meeting families of the kids, communicating with the teachers, and organizing things so we could all get our spiritual buckets filled at church. I guess I felt sort of like a religious cruise director. Is that a thing?

The Primary president is also in charge of staffing all those classes (probably about 30 people altogether) and remember how I said all those teacher positions are filled by calling? So I learned a lot about prayerfully selecting people for callings and discerning God's will. If you ask me, learning what answered prayers feel like is one of the most useful life skills there is.

Most Inspired Calling

(Visiting Teaching Coordinator)

Since babies are basically black holes of your time and energy, the bishop sometimes releases you from a heavy workload calling when you're expecting a baby. Which is why I didn't tell the bishop I was pregnant when I was the Primary president; I loved my calling.

Unfortunately it didn't work, because he called me into his office and released me, anyway. My new calling (should I choose to accept it) was Visiting Teaching Coordinator. Basically, I would be a record-keeper of sorts for the Visiting Teaching program, the church's program for people to take care of each other.

I was really sad — for about a week, and then my pregnancy turned complicated and I wound up on bedrest in the hospital. And wouldn't you know it? Visiting Teaching Coordinator was the perfect calling for me to do from my hospital bed and during the difficult birth and recovery ahead.

Coincidence? You can draw your own conclusions.

Calling I Would Most Like to Avoid

(Relief Society President)

As much as I loved learning from the example of the Relief Society president I served with as a counselor, I wouldn't want to be her.

Of course there's no required personality for a Relief Society president, but I feel like I lack the compassion and ease with people necessary for the job. The Relief Society president is a supportive rock to so many women in our congregation, but I think I'm too awkward and can never find the right words to say without putting a lot of thought into it first (there's a reason I'm a writer and not the host of a live radio show.) I would feel unbearably inadequate to fulfill such an important role.

Publicly stating this feels dangerous, since we in the church like to joke that when you're comfortable with your current calling, you get released; when there's a calling that stretches you, you get asked to do it. I'd say yes if I was asked to be Relief Society president, but I'd need major help from God. MAJOR.

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And those are most of the callings I've had (plus one I haven't) and what I thought about them.

If you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what's been your favorite calling and your hardest calling? If you're not, what do you think about the idea of callings?

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